I slack, therefore I am.
Sit on your ass in the US, your arse in the UK, your whatever-you-want-to-call-it in wherever-you-are and you'll be a slacker.
Sit back on your haunches in China, Japan, India, South East Asia or many other places and you are held in high esteem.
If you run around doing lots of stuff in the UK, USA, or other such nations they'll congratulate you for it. The same activity in India and they'll wonder who put a chilly up your whatever-you-want-to-call-it.
Is it simply that it is much hotter in India and so sitting is more sensible, or is it because sitting is seen as achieving in one continent and lazy in another that this divide occurs? You could well argue that in a cold nation like England people were motivated by harsh conditions to build houses, develop, invent stuff, get drunk and pick fights (both in the pub and over the globe) and that in India people were more able to sit out under the warm starry night philosophising over just the right manner to sit still. But then what of China? There they have every weather condition from sun burn to snowstorm and sitting is a well held virtue.
How is this laziness justified? Well in a way it is not as why should you justify something you have no problem with? and in a way it is justified with such notions as Wu Wei and Zen.
Non-Doing
Wu Wei can be interpreted many ways even by the Chinese and so then we can interpret it in as many ways as we like. This is how such classic texts as the Taoist Tao Te Ching do so well in mass publication - they are open-ended and can be interpreted any-which-way by anyone open to read them. Wu Wei can be seen as pure slacking. It can also be philosopised over deeply to mean allowing the universe to do as it does and not interfering in that with your silly little head.
You're late for the bus, it pulls away - a straight runs after it, a slacker waits for the next one. Each person then claims their method brings about the intended future (getting to destination on time or meeting that stranger who later became your ex-wife) - both were in fact the only future there was ever going to be as - we don't do the universe. It does us. Which pats the slacker firmly on their back and justifies their late arrival to work that day.
Yes the slacker is right but by the same token, so is the straight. But it is the understanding of the vast infinity in flow, and being able to dance along with it that makes slacking the way and the objective.
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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao
